1. Field of the Disclosure
The present disclosure relates to a method and system for treating a substrate in a reaction chamber, particularly for naturally oxidizing the substrate. The substrate may be a wafer, for example, a silicon wafer, which may be coated with an oxygen-affine layer before the treatment in the reaction chamber.
2. Discussion of the Background Art
Substrates may be used for fabricating, for example, optical discs and/or semiconductor elements and/or semiconductor cells and/or parts thereof. In particular fabrication processes, oxidation of a substrate (for example, an already coated substrate) is preferred. In order to obtain an oxide layer of high quality on the substrate, it appears advantageous or even imperative to perform a gentle oxidation of the substrate in a well-defined atmosphere.
However, such a gentle oxidation may take too long to achieve an acceptable overall efficiency of such a treatment process, particularly if many substrates are to be treated sequentially, for example if each substrate is to be treated after it has been coated. Further, it might be advantageous that each of the substrates is to be treated differently after having been coated, for example, the first substrate is to be provided with a much thinner oxide layer than the second substrate.
Due to these reasons, the treatment of the substrates cannot be performed in an effective way if using the methods and devices known from the prior art, since such a treatment process only allows to treat the substrates one-by-one, particularly if it is preferred that the duration of the treatment may vary for the substrates.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,797,323 B1 discloses a method of forming a silicon oxide layer in the production of a semiconductor device.
In view of the above, the object underlying the present disclosure is to provide a method and/or system for accelerating the process of individually treating a plurality of substrates without decreasing the quality of the treatment.
These objects are achieved with the features of the present disclosure.